"Bagu" refers to Baguwen, also known as "Shiwen", "Zhiyi", "Babiwen" or "Sishuwen". This style played an important role in the imperial examination system of the Ming and Qing dynasties.
In the imperial examinations of the Tang Dynasty, poetry was the main focus;In the Northern Song Dynasty, the content of the examination was changed to Jingyi, and its form was closer to prose, and the Jingyi examination in the late Southern Song Dynasty had formed a certain formatBy the Yuan Dynasty, the examination format gradually evolved to resemble the later Baguwen, which was then known as "Babi";During the Ming Dynasty, Baguwen developed into a fixed examination style and continued to be used in the Qing Dynasty.
The eight-strand text has a fixed structure, which is usually composed of parts such as breaking the topic, undertaking the topic, starting the lecture, entering the topic, starting the stock, middle stock, back stock, and bundle stock. Problem solving is used to reveal the main meaning of the question;Undertake the topic and solve the problem, and elaborate on the significance of the topic;The lecture begins with the tone of a sage, and the main content is to further expand the meaning of the topicThe introduction is guided by one or two sentences or two or three transitional sentences to guide the essay into the main topic. Among them, the four paragraphs of the starting stock, the middle share, the back share, and the bundle strand are the main parts of the whole article, which mainly summarize the whole text and give full play to the meaning of the topic.
Gu Yanwu, a scholar in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, explained in the "Daily Knowledge": "The name of the shareholder is also the name of the couple. "Shares are dual, these four paragraphs must contain two strands of arrangement, duality of the text, flat collocation, two pairs opposite, a total of eight shares, hence the name of eight strands.
The title of the Baguwen is mainly selected from the Four Books, and its content is mainly based on works such as Zhu Xi's "Notes on the Four Books" in the Song Dynasty, and the author is not allowed to play freely. The format and number of words in the eight-strand script are strictly regulated. In the Ming and Qing dynasties, the township examination, the first examination of the Hui Examination and the children's examination, the Bagu Wen was used when examining the Four Books and Five Classics. During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, it was stipulated that the number of words in the examination of four books and five ** was limited to 500 words, and papers exceeding 500 words were not given transcription. During the Shunzhi period of the Qing Dynasty, the word limit for each eight-strand essay was 550 words, which was increased to 650 words during the Kangxi period and 700 words during the Qianlong period. It was not until the 27th year of Guangxu, that is, in August 1901, that the imperial examination was reformed through an edict, which clearly stated that "all the four books and five classics are not allowed to use the eight-strand literary program", which ended the history of taking scholars with the eight-strand text.
Although the style of Baguwen is fixed, which is conducive to the examiner's marking and the evaluation criteria are easy to be consistent, its disadvantages are also obvious. First of all, its content must be in accordance with the Four Books and Five Classics and the officially designated annotations, and the candidates are strictly required to "speak on behalf of the sages", which restricts the play of individual thoughts and seriously restricts people's thinking. Secondly, Baguwen pays attention to the neatness of the form and the sonorous tone, and does not pay attention to the substantiation of the content. Thirdly, the content of the Bagu Wen is mainly limited to the scope of the Four Books and the Five Classics, and only Zhu Xi's commentary is taken, so it is only necessary to familiarize yourself with the Four Books and the Five Classics, or even only need to read the Bagu Wen created by famous artists, and you can easily enter the department. In the Bagu era, some juzi didn't learn anything except read Bagu Wen, and they didn't even know a lot of common sense.
Due to the many shortcomings of Baguwen, it seriously lacks vitality. With the abolition of the imperial examination system at the end of the Qing Dynasty, the Bagu Wen soon disappeared, and those overwhelming Bagu Anthologies also quickly disappeared and were abandoned by the times.
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